Food additives



United tates Pate FOOD ADDITIVES No Drawing. Application March 5, 1957Serial No. 643,946

Claims priority, application Germany March 10, 1956 3 Claims. (Cl. 99-4)This invention relates to growth promoting feeding stufis.

It is a well known fact that a number of so-called essential amino acids(for example lysine) must be supplied to the animal organism. It is alsowell known that these essential amino acids are sometimes present in toosmall a quantity in vegetable protein and that consequently the fullvalue of the food cannot be utilized when only vegetable foodstuffs aresupplied. If these lacking amino acids, for example lysine, are addedartificially to the vegetable feeding stuif, the latter is betterutilized, that is to say, more rapid growth can be obtained with thesame amount of feeding stuff.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a novel growthpromoting feeding stuif.

According to this invention I have found that better utilization ofvegetable feeding stuffs, i. e. more rapid growth, can be obtained ifthe feeding stufi contains oc,'ydihydroxy-butyric acid.

Accordingly, the present invention provides a process for the productionof a rapid growth promoting vegetable feeding stuif, which comprisesincorporating afldihydroxy-butyric acid in a vegetable feeding stulf.

This discovery is very surprising, since a -dihydroxybutyric acid doesnot belong to the essential amino acids. It is also surprising that thiscompound is very much more effective than lysine, since the sameincrease in the rate of growth is obtained with the same basic foodstuifby adding only 0.1% of a,'y-dihydroxy-butyric acid instead of 0.5% oflysine.

The vegetable protein containing feeding stufis, for example for poultryand animals such as pigs, can be 2,878,124 Fatented Mar. 17, 1959 ice 2I prepared by adding to the vegetable proteins a certain amount of thea,'y-dihydroxy-butyric acid. In general it is sufiicient if an amount ofabout 0.01-0.2% preferably 0.05-0.1% by weight, of thea,'y-dihydroxy-butyric acid is added to the vegetable protein. Thewy-dihydroxy-butyric acid can be added as chemical.

Example Three batches each of 30 white Leghorn chickens with similarhereditary characteristics were fed under the same conditions in threeparallel series of experiments. In these experiments the feeding stuffconsisted of:

For an increase of g. in body weight the group (a) required 330 g. offeeding stuif, whereas the group (b) required only 223 g. and the group(0) required 230 g.

I claim:

1. A vegetable, poultry and animal feed comprising a lysine deficientpoultry and animal feed containing 05,1- dihydroxy-butyric acid.

2. Feed according to claim 1 containing the orgy-dihydroxy-butyric acidin amount of about 0.010.2% by Weight. t

3. Process for the production of a rapid growth promoting poultry andanimal vegetable feed which comprises incorporatingu,'y-dihydroxy-butyric acid in a vegetable feed having a deficiency oflysine.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS

1. A VEGETABLE, POULTRY AND ANIMAL FEED COMPRISING A LYSINE DEFICIENTPOULTRY AND ANIMAL FEED CONTAINING A,YDIHYDROXY-BUTYRIC ACID.